FAQAnar:F.8.2 - Quel était le contexte social amenant le « laissez-faire » ?
Catégorie:L’anarcho-capitalisme est-il un type d’anarchisme ?
La lune de miel d'intérêt entre les capitalistes du début et les rois autocratiques n'a pas duré longtemps. "Cette même monarchie qui, pour des lourdes raisons a cherché à promouvoir les objectifs du capital commercial et qui était... elle-même aidé dans son développement par le capital, a augmenté en dernier en paralysant tout obstacle à la poursuite du développement de l'industrie européenne"[1].
C'est le contexte social de l'expression "laissez-faire" - système qui a dépassé les soutiens qui le protégait dans ses premiers stades. Tout comme les enfants finissent par se rebeller contre la protection et les règles de leurs parents, de même les capitalistes se sont rebellés contre le sur-soutien de l'Etat absolutiste. Les politiques Mercantilistes sont favorables à certaines industries et nuisent à la croissance des autres. Les règles et règlements imposés à ceux qu'il a bel et bien favorisé réduit la flexibilité des capitalistes au changement d'environnement. Rocker fait valoir que, "quel que soit l'État absolutiste s'est efforcé, dans son propre intérêt, de répondre aux exigences du commerce, il a encore mis sur l'industrie d'innombrables entraves qui sont devenus progressivement de plus en plus oppressante... [Il] est devenu un fardeau insupportable. .. Qui a paralysé toutes les activités économiques et la vie sociale"[2]. Dans l'ensemble, le mercantilisme est devenu plus un obstacle qu'une aide et a dû être remplacé. Avec la croissance économique et sociale du pouvoir par la classe capitaliste, ce remplacement a été rendue plus facile. Comme Errico Malatesta le note :
"The development of production, the vast expansion of commerce, the immeasurable power assumed by money . . . have guaranteed this supremacy [of economic power over political power] to the capitalist class which, no longer content with enjoying the support of the government, demanded that government arise from its own ranks. A government which owed its origin to the right of conquest . . . though subject by existing circumstances to the capitalist class, went on maintaining a proud and contemptuous attitude towards its now wealthy former slaves, and had pretensions to independence of domination. That government was indeed the defender, the property owners' gendarme, but the kind of gendarmes who think they are somebody, and behave in an arrogant manner towards the people they have to escort and defend, when they don't rob or kill them at the next street corner; and the capitalist class got rid of it . . . and replac[ed] it by a government of its own choosing, at all times under its control and specifically organised to defend that class against any possible demands by the disinherited." [Anarchy, pp. 22-3] Malatesta here indicates the true meaning of "leave us alone," or "laissez-faire." The absolutist state (not "the state" per se) began to interfere with capitalists' profit-making activities and authority, so they determined that it had to go -- which the rising capitalist class did when they utilised such popular movements as the English, French and American revolutions. In such circumstances, when the state is not fully controlled by the capitalist class, then it makes perfect sense to oppose state intervention no matter how useful it may have been in the past -- a state run by aristocratic and feudal landlords does not produce class legislation in quite the right form. That changes when members of the capitalist class hold state power and when the landlords start acting more like rural capitalists and, unsurprisingly, laissez-faire was quickly modified and then abandoned once capitalists could rely on a capitalist state to support and protect its economic power within society.
When capitalism had been rid of unwanted interference by the hostile use of state power by non-capitalist classes then laissez-faire had its utility (just as it has its utility today when attacking social welfare). Once this had been accomplished then state intervention in society was encouraged and applauded by capitalists. "It is ironic that the main protagonists of the State, in its political and administrative authority, were the middle-class Utilitarians, on the other side of whose Statist banner were inscribed the doctrines of economic Laissez Faire." [E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, p. 90] Capitalists simply wanted capitalist states to replace monarchical states, so that heads of government would follow state economic policies regarded by capitalists as beneficial to their class as a whole. And as development economist Lance Taylor argues:
"In the long run, there are no laissez-faire transitions to modern economic growth. The state has always intervened to create a capitalist class, and then it has to regulate the capitalist class, and then the state has to worry about being taken over by the capitalist class, but the state has always been there." [quoted by Noam Chomsky, Year 501, p. 104]
In order to attack mercantilism, the early capitalists had to ignore the successful impact of its policies in developing industry and a "store of wealth" for future economic activity. As William Lazonick points out, "the political purpose of [Adam Smith's] the Wealth of Nations was to attack the mercantilist institutions that the British economy had built up over the previous two hundred years. Yet in proposing institutional change, Smith lacked a dynamic historical analysis. In his attack on these institutions, Smith might have asked why the extent of the world market available to Britain in the late eighteenth century was so uniquely under British control. If Smith had asked this 'big question,' he might have been forced to grant credit for Britain's extent of the world market to the very mercantilist institutions he was attacking." Moreover, he "might have recognised the integral relation between economic and political power in the rise of Britain to international dominance." Overall, "[w]hat the British advocates of laissez-faire neglected to talk about was the role that a system of national power had played in creating conditions for Britain to embark on its dynamic development path . . . They did not bother to ask how Britain had attained th[e] position [of 'workshop of the world'], while they conveniently ignored the on going system of national power -- the British Empire -- that . . . continued to support Britain's position." [Business Organisation and the Myth of the Market Economy, p. 2, p. 3 and p.5]
Similar comments are applicable to American supporters of laissez faire who fail to notice that the "traditional" American support for world-wide free trade is quite a recent phenomenon. It started only at the end of the Second World War (although, of course, within America military Keynesian policies were utilised). While American industry was developing, the state and capitalist class had no time for laissez-faire (see section F.8.5 for details). After it had grown strong, the United States began preaching laissez-faire to the rest of the world -- and began to kid itself about its own history, believing its slogans about laissez-faire as the secret of its success. Yet like all other successful industrialisers, the state could aid capitalists directly and indirectly (via tariffs, land policy, repression of the labour movement, infrastructure subsidy and so on) and it would "leave them alone" to oppress and exploit workers, exploit consumers, build their industrial empires and so forth.
Takis Fotopoules indicates that the social forces at work in "freeing" the market did not represent a "natural" evolution towards freedom:
"Contrary to what liberals and Marxists assert, marketisation of the economy was not just an evolutionary process, following the expansion of trade under mercantilism . . . modern [i.e. capitalist] markets did not evolve out of local markets and/or markets for foreign goods . . . the nation-state, which was just emerging at the end of the Middle Ages, played a crucial role creating the conditions for the 'nationalisation' of the market . . . and . . . by freeing the market from effective social control." ["The Nation-state and the Market", pp. 37-80 Society and Nature, Vol. 2, No. 2, pp. 44-45]
The "freeing" of the market means freeing those who "own" most of the market (i.e. the wealthy elite) from "effective social control," but the rest of society was not as lucky. Kropotkin makes a similar point: "While giving the capitalist any degree of free scope to amass his wealth at the expense of the helpless labourers, the government has nowhere and never . . . afforded the labourers the opportunity 'to do as they pleased'." [Anarchism, p. 182]
So, the expression "laissez-faire" dates from the period when capitalists were objecting to the restrictions that helped create them in the first place. It has little to do with freedom as such and far more to do with the needs of capitalist power and profits. It should also be remembered that at this time the state was run by the rich and for the rich. Elections, where they took place, involved the wealthiest of male property owners. This meant there were two aspects in the call for laissez-faire. On the one hand, by the elite to eliminate regulations and interventions they found burdensome and felt unnecessary as their social position was secure by their economic power (mercantilism evolved into capitalism proper when market power was usually sufficient to produce dependency and obedience as the working class had been successfully dispossessed from the land and the means of production). On the other, serious social reformers (like Adam Smith) who recognised that the costs of such elite inspired state regulations generally fell on working class people. The moral authority of the latter was used to bolster the desire of the former to maximise their wealth by imposing costs of others (workers, customers, society and the planet's eco-system) with the state waiting in the wings to support them as and when required.
Unsurprising, working class people recognised the hypocrisy of this arrangement (even if most modern-day right-"libertarians" do not and provide their services justifying the actions and desires of repressive and exploitative oligarchs seeking monopolistic positions). They turned to political and social activism seeking to change a system which saw economic and political power reinforce each other. Some (like the Chartists and Marxists) argued for political reforms to generalise democracy into genuine one person, one vote. In this way, political liberty would be used to end the worse excesses of so-called "economic liberty" (i.e., capitalist privilege and power). Others (like mutualists) aimed at economic reforms which ensure that the capitalist class would be abolished by means of genuine economic freedom. Finally, most other anarchists argued that revolutionary change was required as the state and capitalism were so intertwined that both had to be ended at the same time. However, the struggle against state power always came from the general population. As Murray Bookchin argued, it is an error to depict this "revolutionary era and its democratic aspirations as 'bourgeois,' an imagery that makes capitalism a system more committed to freedom, or even ordinary civil liberties, than it was historically." [From Urbanisation to Cities, p. 180f] While the capitalist class may have benefited from such popular movements as the English, American and French revolutions but these revolutions were not led, never mind started or fought, by the bourgeoisie.
Not much as changed as capitalists are today seeking maximum freedom from the state to ensure maximum authority over their wage slaves and society. The one essential form of support the "Libertarian" right wants the state (or "defence" firms) to provide capitalism is the enforcement of property rights -- the right of property owners to "do as they like" on their own property, which can have obvious and extensive social impacts. What "libertarian" capitalists object to is attempts by others -- workers, society as a whole, the state, etc. -- to interfere with the authority of bosses. That this is just the defence of privilege and power (and not freedom) has been discussed in section B and elsewhere in section F, so we will not repeat ourselves here. Samuel Johnson once observed that "we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of Negroes." [quoted by Noam Chomsky, Year 501, p. 141] Our modern "libertarian" capitalist drivers of wage-slaves are yelping for exactly the same kind of "liberty."
Notes et references[edit]
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